Wishing Well

Elysia Boon, Singapore

1. In another timeline, I do not scare myself.

I sing in the shower and sneak out in the middle of the night

to see imaginary boyfriends, bare legs

prone to mosquito bites and park lamplight, a string

of events that are reminiscent of a process in which

I dig up new bodies and hold their hands tight enough

until they let go. Offspring mimic their ancestry.

2. In another timeline, the hand pushed through my chest

is fatal, and all I can do is beep erratically, like an ECG,

all I can do is say sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it,

and they’ll wheel me away while my mother holds what she thinks

is my hand and my attention. She says that it is terrible

when a child dies young. I try to tell her that it is worse

when a child dies with a hand through their chest.

3. In some future, I’ll have an electric car. It’s important

to have goals, or something. I’ll wound something fatally,

get kissed by a train, grow up to write pretentious poetry

as a side gig. My dreams will learn to become

small enough to carry through the door of my potential.

In some other future, I will eat at the family table

and my mother will ask me why I am not more.

Elysia Boon is an undergraduate at Oxford University.